


Those That Stay

by WhiteBishop



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Keith (Voltron), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Keith, Badass Keith, Badass Shiro, Blind Character, Blind Keith, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family, Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Loads of Cuddles, Pidge | Katie Holt is Savage, Pre-Voltron: Legendary Defender, Protective Hunk (Voltron), Protective Keith (Voltron), Protective Lance (Voltron), Protective Pidge (Voltron), Protective Shiro (Voltron), Protective Team, Protectiveness, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Space Mom Allura (Voltron), Space Uncle Coran (Voltron), Space family, Team Bonding, Team Feels, Team Fluff, Team Voltron Family, Team as Family, Voltron: Legendary Defender Spoilers, because when isn't she though let's be real, voltron: legendary defender - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 07:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8657974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteBishop/pseuds/WhiteBishop
Summary: Keith didn't know how he had survived before Voltron.He definitely doesn't know how he survived the academy.And he sure as hell doesn't know how he's going to survive this new challenge life has decided to throw at him, because apparently his life wasn't hard enough already. Go figure.It's a good thing that Keith has people who will stay and wait for him to stop running, even if he doesn't quite know it yet. “People are gonna leave anyway, because those who stay are not people, they are family.”-Himanshu Chhabra





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm kind of now just realizing that all of my story titles are pretentious in their supposed philosophical importance. Meh, oh well. Guess I'm just that kind of author.
> 
> Also this is cheesy and fluffy as fuck.  
> Yeah, I'm that author too. Not much I can do about it, so who cares!
> 
> Also a little OOC but I'm taking the excuse that a) they're younger, b) they don't know each other as well, c) this IS fan fiction in case anybody hasn't noticed, and d) plot points that are yet to be revealed.  
> So enjoy!

Keith didn’t know how he had survived before Voltron.

God, Shiro had probably been the only thing that had saved his life back then.

Keith still remembered how it had been, before, in the dark days before he had quite literally stumbled into Shiro. Out on the streets since before he could remember because his parents hadn’t wanted a screwed up kid, Keith didn’t know how he had survived as a toddler. Keith vaguely remembered various homeless people taking him under their wing for a bit, before they either disappeared because of the harsh reality of living on the street, or inevitably realized what was wrong with him and left him in the middle of the night.

Keith didn’t blame them, not really. In truth, he was just angry with himself. Why couldn’t he just be normal? It was this stupid thing that caused people to leave him! It was Keith’s fault people left him, so he bit back the tears that threatened to fall on those mornings when they didn’t come back, and learned to muffle his cries.

After a while he avoided the others and learned to fend for himself, sparing himself the pain that came with the presence of other people. Huddling in dark corners at night, curled into a ball to conserve what little body heat he had; scrambling in restaurant dumpsters to find food, and scampering off as fast as he could after the cook came out the back door to find the little raggedy street kid in his trash (though why they always cared so much Keith never figured out); memorizing the streets in his area so he wouldn’t ever get caught by the people that smelled like alcohol or bad things; when things got really bad, he was forced to steal. Keith didn’t like it, and he spent hours feeling guilty after each time he pickpocketed someone or his thin bony fingers pocketed the health bars in the convenience store, but he hadn't had any other choice. Keith was forced to do whatever it took, otherwise he’d have been dead in a little less than a day.

For years, Keith had hung on by the skin of his teeth, surviving hour by hour, until somehow, magically and miraculously, Shiro had walked into his life. Well, Keith guessed it would be more apt to say that he was the one to run into Shiro, since he was the one pickpocketing the older male, but eh it was semantics.

It was turning into a particularly cold winter, and Keith hadn’t had any luck with raiding the trash recently, and he wasn’t as small as he had been so it was getting a lot harder for him to fit in the dumpsters, or be sneaky enough to avoid the other, more dangerous guys to get to the better areas for food, so when he woke up that morning and failed to feel the hunger pains that had been dodging him for the past week, he knew it was time to do a round in the square.

It had been a slow morning, and nobody had anything much of anything in their pockets, so Keith decided to wait for the evening commuter rush. When people began crossing the square in larger masses, Keith knew it was time. Making his way into the crowd, he kept his head down toward the ground and stealthily felt around people’s pockets and pilfered their contents as he bumped into them. It was only after about half an hour of this, and Keith had exited and re-entered the square from different streets several times already, after a thump and a murmured apology, and moments after his thin hand reached into the person’s coat pocket had snatched the wallet that the man has twisted and caught his wrist in a vice-like grip.

"Excuse me, but I think that's mine." The man told him. Keith froze up (no one have ever caught him _shit shit shit_ what did he do??!!), before snarling and twisting his free free from the man's firm grip and bolting fast as he could from the stranger.

"Hey, wait!" The man yelled after him, chasing Keith through the square. The man was too big however, and the crowd that Keith darted and slipped through either his thin small body proved to be an impassable wall to the larger man, and he soon fell behind.

Keith didn't stop however, heart hammering inside of his chest as he sprinted down the streets. Whipping into a side alley, Keith turned to listen for any footsteps following, but missed the three large shape in front of him in his distress.

_Wha-bam!_

Keith slammed into a solid-smushy object at a dead sprint, knocking both of them to the ground.

"Uuuggh," Keith groaned, raising himself up in his arms as he shook his head to clear away the dizziness, but only made it worse.

"Hey hey boys, look who we have here?" One of the men said darkly.

 _Oh shit_ , Keith cursed in his head. He'd had a run in with this crew a couple days ago, ‘invading’ their territory. Please, he’d been camped out on that street corner for weeks!

“Why if it isn’t Keith?” One of the men taunted as the gang grabbed Keith and hoisted him up. Keith tried to make a break for it, but as soon as he was vertical his head swung viciously and he’d been too busy fighting back the urge to vomit to even worry about trying to run. “How ‘ya doin’ Keith? Having a nice day?!” Punctuating the end of his short little spiel, the man punched Keith in the stomach.

Ouch. That really hadn’t helped the fact that Keith’s stomach was trying to rebel against him by coming up Keith’s throat.

The man punched him again and Keith gasped, choking on his need to breathe as all the air was knocked out of him.

Punch after punch, Keith was pinned by the men beside him as the other whaled on his body and face.

“You- really- need- to- learn- a- lesson- you- little- brat!” The last punch, particularly hard, knocked Keith out of the grip of the other men to drop bonelessly to the ground, nose bleeding and broken, ears ringing and head spinning. Yep, definite signs of a concussion. Keith fought to stay alert. Blood from his nose was pooling and dripping into his mouth. Ew.

The punching man leaned down over Keith.

“Don’t worry kid,” and Keith could hear the nasty grin practically split the man’s face, “we’ll beat ‘cha black n’ blue, ’til ya can’t give none o’ us any lip no more, yeah?” The man kicked him in the head, and Keith saw stars.

It would’ve been pretty if not for the pain splitting his skull the very next moment.

“Hey!” An unknown voice shouted from behind Keith. But no, that wasn’t quite right. It was…familiar, somehow? “Back off the kid and nobody gets hurt.” The men laughed derisively. On the ground Keith wracked his throbbing brain for why the voice sounded familiar. Oh! It was… that guy! Form before, the one he’d tried to pickpocket. Before his swimming thoughts could follow that track any further, the gang leader spoke up.

“Boy, if anybody else is gonna get hurt today, it’ll be you and the kid here!” To emphasize his mistaken authority, the man kicked Keith once more. The last thing Keith was aware of was an angry roar, like a lion’s, and the sense of someone cradling him in their arms. He was clearly delirious, since the last person that had cradled him so gently was his real mother, and she was long gone.

…his…mother? The vague thought drifted away into darkness, and Keith soon followed.

* * *

"Hey....hey, kid...."

"...C'mon man, you gotta wake up!"

Keith jerked, his ears ringing, and disoriented his head swiveled trying to figure out where he was eyelids fluttering but refusing to open. The moment he realized his head was cushioned on something, a voice spoke up from near his left ear.

"Hey, you awake now?" The man asked, sounding concerned. "Sorry for yelling in your ear, but I couldn't let you fall asleep, since you, ah, probably have a concussion." At the man's words, Keith realized the cold seeping into his ragged jeans, the foreign warmth at his back highlighting the sharpness of the cold that had been his only companion for a very long time.

"Kid? Hey!" The man shook him slightly. "Don't fall asleep okay? Just try to stay awake." Keith clawed his way out from the cloying drowsiness threatening to bring him under again, and nodded slightly, too exhausted to try and say anything, or even really comprehend that someone was trying to help him. Everything was just too...floaty. "My name's Shiro, and we're going to go get you help okay? So just stay awake!"

Keith felt his body become weightless as Shiro hooked his arm underneath his knees and lifted him into the air.

"Damn, that's a lot of blood." Keith heard the man curse as if from far away. "Kid? Hold on okay? Help is on the way, just keep fighting for me okay?"

Keith nodded again, his nose smushed against the man's warm chest as something warm and sticky dripped down the side of his face.

It was sometime later, when he was taken from that comforting warmth and the voice yelling for him to keep fighting faded away and other sharper voices took its place that Keith's consciousness finally dimmed out of reality.

* * *

 

The next day he had woken to the tell-tale beep beep beep of a heart monitor, head feeling heavy and the tingling of bruises littering face, as well as several pangs aches across his torso.

"You're awake." A relieved voice (Shiro's, Keith remembered distantly) said from Keith's upper right. Keith shifted to face the stranger.

"What happened? Who- who are you? Where am I?" He slurred, still woozy from painkillers. His hand raised to rub at his head and found thick bandages wrapped tightly around his skull. Twitching his other arm, he registered something slightly amiss. Something was...poking into his elbow?

The monitor's steady beat suddenly jumped as Keith's heart rate skyrocketed. He lurched up, chest heaving as his hand kept to his elbow, frantic to get the thing that was _freaking stabbing_ him out when-

"Whoa there!" Shiro's hand whipped out of nowhere and snatched his wrist. The other hand placed itself on Keith's chest (bandaged, probably a couple cracked ribs Keith belatedly noticed) and pushed him gently back down onto the bed. "That's there to help you, not hurt you, so calm down alright?" Keith swallowed, resisting the urge to bolt right out of there, screw this man and whatever the hell he said, but the fact remained that e didn't know where he was or even what was going on. So he stayed. He pushed the idea that something warm pulsing in his chest had been the real reason he hadn't run, logic be damned, to back of his mind and repeated his questions.

Shiro hummed and responded genially. "You're at the hospital. I brought you here after I found you in that alley. My name is Shiro, by the way. I wasn't sure if you remembered, you had a pretty nasty concussion after all." Keith shook his head slowly. 

"I remember you telling me your name," Keith offered cautiously, "but everything else is just kind of a blur."

"Well, after I found you in the alley, I beat the guys who were attacking you and got you to a hospital." Keith was skeptical. Shiro, having seen Keith's look, explained further. "I studied martial arts since I was a kid, so it was a walk in the park to take out some drunk delinquents." Shiro coughed. "Anyways, after that I got you to the hospital. You were bleeding pretty badly, and had a head wound so I didn't want to chance anything."

"Oh," Keith replied softly, hands scrunching the sheets on his bed.

"What's wrong?" Shiro asked him. Keith bit his lip.

"It's just," Keith wrung his hands together, "I, I really don't have the money to pay for all of this." Silence.

"Oh, okay, well that's silly." Shiro told him. "I'm paying for you of course."

"What?!" Keith exclaimed, sitting up again. "But-"

"Ah! No buts!" Shiro scolded him. Keith continued to protest until Shiro shushed him. 

"Hey, I'm the one who brought you here, so I'm paying." Shiro laughed. "Besides, I'm the one who chased you into that alley, so it's partly my fault you got into that bad situation anyways." Finally Keith ceased his protests, and fell silence, shrinking back into the bed as if the pillows (fluffier than anything he had ever felt before oh god) could hide him from Shiro's gaze. Keith suddenly felt very small.

"You aren't mad at me?" He whispered, ashamed. "You aren't going to turn me into the police?" Shiro reeled back. 

"Hey, no way! I'm not angry at you, honest." Keith could practically hear the smile in Shiro's voice, even   through the multitude of pillows he had buried himself in.

"Hey, so I never got the chance, but what's your name kid?" Shiro asked him.

Keith blinked. Was he just going to trust this random guy he'd met by trying to pickpocket him? Keith didn't know how to trust anyone, barely knew how to trust himself.

But still something deep inside of him urged him onward, to reach out and take the hand Shiro was offering him.

Well. Do or die, Keith supposed.

"Keith. My name is Keith." He told Shiro quietly.

Shiro chuckled. "Okay then, Keith. It's nice to meet you. Now that I have your name, I can the staff to replace the 'John Doe' placeholder they had you under. How old are you, Keith?" Keith sobered.

"I- I'm not really sure..." he said, trailing off into nervous silence.

Shiro didn't miss a beat. "Well, you don't crazy younger than me, but you're still pretty small-looking, and I'm 19 so maybe you're in the ballpark of around 10-13?"

"Okay," Keith replied softly. He really didn't know how long he had spent on the streets. It was long though, that he knew for certain.

Shiro settled deeper in his chair for a long talk.

"So, how did you end up out there anyways? If you don't mind me asking, of course." Shiro asked him tentatively.

Keith shrugged. He didn't mind sharing this, it wasn't all that important how he got on the streets. 

"Yeah, I guess my foster parents were assholes, and didn't want me, and threw me out." Keith fibbed a bit, flinching slightly at the omission of exactly why they had thrown him out. It was a secret he'd taken great lengths to hide, because if anybody had found out when he was out on the streets he'd be dead in a matter of minutes. And old habits died hard.

The room was silent for a while after that revelation.

"I'm sorry," Shiro told him softly.

Keith waved him off. "Don't be, like I said, they were assholes and not my real parents anyways, so who the hell cares yeah?"

The crappy hospital chair shifted as Shiro stood, walking closer to put a hand on Keith's shoulder.

"I care." Keith was floored. Like, what??? This random stranger? Cared about him? The one he had literally tried to ROB only days ago?! No, no fucking way. Nobody in his life cared about him before, not really, and definitively not after that figured out what the hell was wrong with him.

"What the hell?" Keith snarled, shoving off the comforting hand. "That's bullshit and we both know it, why the fuck would you care about some random kid on the fucking street you just met?"

The collar of his Shiro's shirt rustled as the man replied.

"It's not bullshit." Shiro told him gently. "I do care. I don't know exactly why, but I do." Shiro perched on the edge of the bed, ignoring Keith's bristling state. "I can tell you're a good kid, Keith. And you're special."

Keith scoffed. "Special," he spat, fists white with suppressed shame and guilt. He was special alright. Just not the good kind of special.

"And I do care about you. Really. I wouldn't have chased after you and jumped into that fight for nothing, you know?" Shiro pointed out. "So, that's why..." Shiro took a deep breath, "I wanted to know if you wanted to come live with me."

Keith was shocked into silence.

"I mean, you don't have to have an answer now, but I just wanted you to think about it?" Shiro hurried on. "And I know it's sudden and all, so that's my bad, um, and of course you can say no of course, if you want, you probably think I'm a total nut job for doing this, and I'm sorry for springing this's all on you like this," Shiro stammered, "but I really would like to make sure you're at least taken care of?" The situation was so absurd, that Keith couldn't help but start laughing at Shiro's ridiculously out-of-character nervousness.

Shiro seemed taken aback for a moment, but joined him laughing at his own silly behavior. It was only several minutes later than Keith's laughter became interspersed with small sobs, tears leaking for the corner of his eyes.

He just, couldn't understand why anybody would do this? Jump into a street fight, bring him to a hospital, offer to take care of him? Nobody had ever cared about him, and the sudden attention on his being made Keith's chest feel wrecked.

"Hey. C'mere." Shiro whispered, warm arms snaking gently around Keith's back, tugging him forward into Shiro's broad chest. Keith felt guilty he was getting the man's shirt wet, but couldn't find any strength to pull away. Yeah older man's arms were firm around him, yet loose enough that if Keith wanted to pull away he could do so easily. Keith...didn't really want to.

"If you really knew about me, you wouldn't be so kind to me." Keith choked out into Shiro's chest. A hand ran lightly through Keith hair.

"I think I would." Shiro hummed, his soft smile tickling the hairs on the top of Keith's head as the man tucked his chin to press closer to the thin boy.

Keith didn't know how long they had stayed like that, but afterwards Shiro was kind enough to avoid mentioning the faint streaks on Keith's face when the two pulled away. As Shiro turned and rummaged for something in a bag on the floor, Keith quickly scrubbed away all evidence.

"By the way, I figured you wouldn't want _this_  taken by the hospital staff, so I hope you don't mind that I grabbed it." Shiro said over his shoulder. "Here."

But Keith, tired and still not at full capacity (he was still concussed _and_ drugged, no wonder Shiro had caught on so quickly), hadn't reacted. Just stared at him.

"Um, I'm sorry?" Shiro had offered, bemused at why Keith wouldn't take the dagger the man had found stuffed in the belt loop of the kids pants on his way to the hospital.

Keith was confused at what was going on, but had a strange sinking feeling.

"Shiro?" Keith asked, hesitantly.

The room stilled with a sudden tension, as Shiro wracked his head, pulling the bits and pieces together, put 2 and 2 together and got 4, disbelieving and something hard settling in the pit of his stomach, but still...the evidence all added up.

"Keith..." Shiro breathed, arm falling to his side.

"You're not... blind, are you?!"

Keith let out a sharp breath, caught off guard. Damnit, Shiro was too perceptive.

Keith ducked his head in shame. God damn him, why couldn't he have been better at faking it? Now the one person who might've stayed was going to leave him. People always left him once they figured out he was broken.

Keith tensed as Shiro leaned closer, flinching away. The man hesitated for a moment, before continuing his path. A few seconds later, a shaky hand cupped Keith's cheek, tilting his face up as a thumb gently traced his lower eyelid.

"Oh God, Keith, is- this is why they threw you out?!" Shiro hissed. Keith didn't reply. Shiro's other hand came to rest on Keith's other cheek. Shiro shifted on the bed, and Keith was lost for a moment until a slight pressure touched his temple and he realized Shiro had pressed his forehead to his own.

"Keith. I want you to listen to me." The older man said firmly. "Just because you are blind, does not mean that people were right to abandon you. Whoever those 'people' were," Shiro spat, "they were horrible and cruel human beings for making you think that."

"And no matter what, if you don't want me to, then I won't leave you. Okay Keith?"

Keith screwed his eyes shut, fighting back the burning sensation, and the hot lump scorching his throat as he choked up at Shiro's words. No one had ever stayed.

"I promise." Shiro swore. And Keith believed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope that was enough cheese for you, you losers.
> 
> (Space-Dad to the rescue!)
> 
> Also, let me know if I screwed up too badly. Writing a blind character is tough shit man, no joke.


End file.
